Thousands of Californians Still Waiting for Unemployment Checks

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Tens of thousands of Californians still face delays in getting unemployment checks because of a problem implementing a new payment system at the Employment Development Department.

The EDD’s Loree Levy said the staff worked through the weekend to fix the problem and clear the backlog. But she said, as of Monday, about 80 thousand people were still waiting to have their claims to be processed.

“However, looking down the road, we do see the right trend in place where we have fewer and fewer people coming into the backlog,” Levy said. “At the same time we’re clearing some cases out of the backlog, so we do anticipate some progress, certainly, over the days ahead.”

Levy said she cannot predict when the backlog will be cleared, but employees will work through the coming weekend.

She said a combination of factors caused the delay. There were EDD staff reductions because of federal budget cuts, more people filed for unemployment and there were problems making the transition to the new payment system.